So I’ve started to bring more curiosity and openness to how I wake up. What thoughts am I first aware of? Do they come with or cause any emotional affect in the body? Or am I driven to thoughts to distract myself from some emotional discomfort already present in the body? And whatever I notice, can I meet it with equanimity, just allow it without any resistance, agenda, or need for it to go away or be other than it is?
Writing about it now makes it sound much more dramatic than it was at the time. It was special, but also so utterly ordinary. Life was just happening as always, only without all the extra noise—the stream of thoughts constantly objectifying experience into solid and separate things. The story of separateness. The narrative is so deeply embedded in the noise floor of our experience that we don’t even hear it anymore. Until it drops away.
What made it special was that the ordinary sounds were being experienced in an extraordinary way – with deep equanimity. In other words, I was simply being with the sounds exactly as they were; Free from expectations – I didn’t need the sounds to be special, unusual, or in any way different than they were. Free from comparison – I wasn’t comparing them to sounds I’d heard in the past, or an idea of how I thought they should be. There was no good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, ordinary or extraordinary. Free from ego – I didn’t make it about ‘me’ or an identity as ‘artist’ or ‘musician’. And free from control – I simply let the sounds come and go without resistance.
My practice has helped me cultivate acceptance. When I give up on the present moment being any different than it is, there is equanimity. I am free to engage fully with what is because I’m not stuck in what I think should be. I’m free to respond with grace, empathy, compassion, spontaneity, and love. And when I fail, acceptance forgives me and invites me to try again.
What does it mean to ‘wake up’? Allow me to take a stab at my own definition – just for kicks – based on my limited experience and training:
If we welcome and pay attention to what’s happening in sensory experience, the experience of separateness reveals itself to be part of the activity of absolute non-separateness.
Or something like that.